For professionals arguing for ethical responsibility in inter-country adoption, Madonna's successful appeal to adopt four-year-old Mercy James was a heavy blow (Madonna and child, 12 June). As the founder of OrphanAid Africa, I have lived in a small village in Ghana for seven years. We believe that poverty is not a reason to separate children from their families. We provide cash grants to poor families so that they can afford to care for their children and are not forced to send them to orphanages just to ensure food and education.

Jacques Peretti, the author of your article, says that, because of her largesse, poor Malawians practically worship Madonna: "Her name ... has mutated into 'Ma Donor': the Giver." However, Madonna alone cannot "save from poverty" any country: that would involve important economic structural reform, in which she has not invested. Esme Chombo, the provincial judge, was right when she ruled that the adoption was unlawful, and she "was scornful of western attitudes towards Malawian poverty ... and [defended] the existing law, protecting these children from trafficking".

I am not against inter-country adoption. Many professionals believe it is a good solution for abandoned children with no family, or those who are unlikely be adopted locally. But Mercy has a family - a grandmother and a father - and being in an orphanage may reflect poverty more than abandonment. You report a local journalist saying: "When children like Mercy are left in orphanages by families, it is often because the families simply can't cope for a period of time. The understanding of the families is that they will take the kids back."

Mercy's grandmother, Lucy Chekechiwa, had originally resisted the adoption. But, as you report: "However tough Lucy has been in resisting Madonna, Madonna has been tougher ... no one tells Madonna she cannot have what she wants. And now ... Lucy caved in." Can we please spare a thought as to how Lucy feels today? Having delivered Mercy, watched Mercy's mother die a few days later from complications after the birth, and cared for the child to the best of her ability, Lucy doesn't know if she will see her granddaughter again.

Peretti ends by saying: "I leave the orphanage [where Madonna's charity is a donor] thinking that if Madonna could roll this out across Africa, even if it involved lots of people signing up to Kabbalah, how could that not be a good thing?" Well, because orphanages are bad for children - as three decades of research has proved - and are unacceptable as a long-term care solution. In Africa today, most of the children in orphanages have family. Many orphanages actively recruit children to access per-head grants from foreign churches and charities - the more children, the more money. In the worst cases they provide handy pick-up points for child trafficking, child labour and the sex trade.

Worldwide, institutional care is only recommended as a last resort, when all other options have been exhausted. And undermining local culture by grafting foreign belief systems such as Kabbalah on tribal populations is simply unacceptable.